Spent what felt like a ridiculous length of time yesterday assembling the puzzle also known as a syllabus. That’s one of the tasks I tend to postpone, consciously thinking it’ll be a snap but subliminally suspecting (I suppose) it’ll be puzzling. I don’t really like puzzles. (But you’ll find the result, A&S students, on the course homepage.)
Already knowing what we’re going to read in a course, you might assume it would be a small matter to decide in what order and in what increments to read it all. And it is, really, in the larger scheme. But committing a syllabus to paper (or to the course homepage) is still a commitment, so I had to think about it, and re-think it, and then finally decided there was just too much required reading. (I don’t recall ever deciding that on syllabus-drafting day before, btw.) Probably still is, but this is a “readings” course and we’re just scratching the surface of a topical iceberg that’s not melting.
So: Robert Wright goes from required to recommended, and Richard Dawkins’ rainbow gets foreshortened. That makes it all fit better, but who’s on first? And second…?
What I finally came down to, in this case, was an initial around-the-horn sampling of each text before going back and burrowing deeper. We’ll begin by reading the introductory chapters first, thereby getting all our authors’ voices into the conversation early. I’ll make sure to put in a word for the downgraded Mr. Wright and confreres like Karen Armstrong too, who also deserve a hearing. Same for Debra Goldstein’s God novel. Then, with all those voice echoing, we can take each author aside in turn for a fuller airing of their respective points of view.
Still have some TBAs (“to be announced”) to fill in early and late, as inspiration dictates. I ran out of that yesterday, but fortunately it’s still a renewable resource.
So there’s the plan. It was actually kinda fun, as I admit a challenging puzzle can be. Now I get to do it again today, for the other classes. Oh boy.
Up@dawn 
January 7, 2010 at 1:42 pm |
I received the required texts from Amazon last week and have almost finished André Comte-Sponville’s book The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. I understand your frustration with choosing the titles as well as determining the time and depth to be spent on each one. One could spend a semester on Comte-Sponville alone. Although the tone of his argument is considerably milder than that of Christopher Hitchens, his, as well as age-old, arguments are very thorough and systematically presented. It has taken me what seems like forever to get through his book because I kept researching the arguments, quotes, and positions of the many philosophers (and comedians) mentioned in the text e.g., Hume, Freud, Wittgenstein, Kant, Leibniz, Spinoza, Pascal, Woody Allen, etc.
In the first chapter, “Can We Do Without Religion,” there is a passage on hope that I found most interesting. President Obama wrote a book entitled The Audacity of Hope, which is on my future reading list. I have always been suspicious of “hope” but I could never quite put my philosophical finger on it until I ran across this little gem on page 53 in The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality: “To wish only for what depends on us (to want) is to give ourselves the means of making it happen. To wish for what does not depend on us (to hope) is to condemn ourselves to powerlessness and resentment. The path is clear enough. The wise act; the foolish hope and tremble.”
That seems like a pretty good way to approach each living moment while I search for the elusive meaning of Wittgenstein’s seventh proposition in the Tractatus.
January 7, 2010 at 10:33 pm |
I don’t know if I can help you totally decipher the cryptic, phlegmatic Herr Wittgenstein, Dean. But I recently learned something about him that astonished me: his last statement was that it had been a “wonderful life.” His demeanor had fooled everyone!
I’m glad you’re liking Comte-Sponville, who is the most Pragmatic (in the very best philosophical sense) French thinker I’ve ever encountered. Better than Bergson, but still French enough to write: “The more I get to know human beings, the less I can believe in God.” We may spend more time with him than I allowed, on the syllabus. Teacher’s prerogative.
January 8, 2010 at 1:10 am |
I must offer my most sincere thanks to the wonderful Dr. Mary Magada-Ward for introducing me to the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein in her Philosophy of Language class. I am constantly contemplating that Wittgenstein is still misinterpreted and the Tractatus holds the key. My statement may be a bit ambitious but then again, it may have been true for Wittgenstein who was reportedly dedicated to moral and philosophical perfection.
How can one write a book claiming to solve all philosophical problems while being held captive as a prisoner of war during World War I from 1917 until its end in 1918? One would think, under those conditions, that one would develop a keen sense of the here and now. Consequently, under those adverse conditions he writes: “The world is all that is the case” and “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”
Is Wittgenstein talking about the absolute? Has poetry and art solved the mystery by simply being non-analytic and fearless in its presentation? Is this what Wittgenstein inferred. Is this moment the “absolute?” Is this what Comte-Sponville refers to as “spirituality?” Comte-Sponville is constantly referring to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. I’m rustling back through my notes from Dr. Magada-Ward’s class.
I’m still searching. I’m in way over my head and now it hurts.
Thank (your god here) I took good notes.
“Love, not hope, is what helps us live. Truth, not faith, is what sets us free.”
January 8, 2010 at 12:56 pm |
I’ll pass along your kudos to Dr. M-W, who works the other side of the pragmatic street from me, and down the hall. She’s a Peircean, I’m a Happy Jamesian, and we happily co-exist. I’m somewhat less enthusiastic about Wittgenstein (a former student derisively called him Witty) but there’s no denying his provocative and mysterious importance.